I hope that libertarians have an idea of how to link tactics and strategy to the objective of moving the Overton window.

It seems non-trivial in a country like the U.S. with first-past-the-post elections. Without “proportional representation” in legislatures, it’s not clear to me what the role of small parties is.

I suspect that many people who vote for small parties in the U.S. don’t understand Proportional Representation, nor the fact that some countries have it (but we in the USA do not).

There have been and still are to varying degrees. The Whigs/Liberals were a governing party in Britain for a very long time. The US Constitution is a profoundly libertarian document, containing, as it does, the bill of rights along with (what are supposed to be) strict limits on government powers. Some of this has been creatively ‘interpreted’ away, but much remains. And, in many ways, the US is more libertarian than it was in the mid 20th century. There is no longer a ‘Civil Aeronautics Board’ that dictates all routes and airfares. Something like Nixon’s wage and price controls would be unthinkable now (perhaps even among Sanders supporters). Discrimination against gays and minorities is much reduced which is something libertarians have long favored (the LP nominated John Hospers, an openly gay man, as its first presidential candidate). Home brewing was legalized and legal marijuana is well on the way in many states. And so on.

Progress for libertarians doesn’t consist of the Libertarian Party winning elections, but in trying to gradually move the Overton window in a libertarian direction.

I’ve since learned that the “libertarian” view of the country is that its as a statist shithole and LKY is the reincarnation of Hitler. If Singapore isn’t libertarian enough, what country is?

“Why are there no libertarian countries? If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?

It’s not as though there were a shortage of countries to experiment with libertarianism. There are 193 sovereign state members of the United Nations—195, if you count the Vatican and Palestine, which have been granted observer status by the world organization. If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it? Wouldn’t there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?

When you ask libertarians if they can point to a libertarian country, you are likely to get a baffled look, followed, in a few moments, by something like this reply: While there is no purely libertarian country, there are countries which have pursued policies of which libertarians would approve: Chile, with its experiment in privatized Social Security, for example, and Sweden, a big-government nation which, however, gives a role to vouchers in schooling.

But this isn’t an adequate response. Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realms—defense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world.”

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/04/the_question_libertarians_just_cant_answer/

You guys would enjoy your life much more if you gave this real world thing a rest and stayed in your imaginary utopia. Enjoy the people that agree with you at your convention.